Thanks to Rupali for the idea to talk about what I’ve been reading. I love sharing what I’m reading and also hearing about what you’re reading (or listening to – audio books are still reading in my book). My reading ebbs and flows. Just before the pandemic I read a ton – with a 1.5 hour transit trip each way to/from work I had loads of time to read. I continued that habit during the pandemic as well, sometimes even “simulating” a transit trip by putting on audio ambient Toronto subway audio while Sage and I read in the living room to add an element of normalcy to what was a very abnormal time. With less reasons to go out in the world I read more in that time than any other time in my life. (Coincidentally transit was definitely not a cause for it this time. During the pandemic, to try to stay healthy I swore off transit and by association motor vehicles for over 18 months. The longest time in my life traveling only by my own power – bike and walking)
Then in 2024 a big and positive change happened in that we moved to our current apartment. depending on the route it’s only 5-6 km from work – 20 minutes by transit or bike. So as you might imagine, my reading took a nosedive – until late December when I noticed this and decided to add a daily minimum of 30 minutes of reading time before leaving to work. I could still wake up at the same time as before, still get in some good reading and also get to work at the same time. Win/win!
One thing I learned during the pandemic, though, was to have an emotional mix in my book choices. I do have a tendency to read sadder books both fiction and non-fiction and if I don’t add something light or funny to the mix to read at the same time I take an emotional hit. I think you’ll see it in my reading choices this month.
The End of the World As We Know It – New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand By Christopher Golden:
You might be tempted to classify a short story collection set in a world beset by a huge and fast pandemic with a bit of a battle between good and evil supernatural forces as “sad” or at least “heavy”. But this one is really weird for me. The Stand, by Stephen King, is a 1300+ page book set in the US where a rapidly mutating strain of the flu, engineered by the government escapes and proceeds to kill most of the world. Those who are left are drawn either to “The Dark One” – Randall Flagg who lives in Las Vegas and is portrayed as demonic, espousing all sorts of evil as well as hedonism (thus Las Vegas) or Mother Abgail, an old-school Christian who espouses peace (but is well aware of Flagg’s existence).
I’ve read this book at least four times in my life including, weirdly enough, starting it again after the pandemic was declared in 2020. Somehow it doesn’t feel scary but somehow feels cozy. It might be the character development or the visit back to the 80s or just where I was in my life when I first read it but it is absolutely the case. I feel the same about the original TV Miniseries which you can watch here:
The short story collection is another long one – not quite as long as the novel itself but still a heavy read parceled in to bite sized pieced. I realize now I literally started reading this one the last time I came down with COVID in late summer. Unintentionally when I got to a stopping point I grabbed the nearest thing to use as a bookmark which turned out to be a KN95 mask. Once it was in there it seemed appropriate.
The book was a mix of some really good stories and world-building that I wish would spawn whole novels and a few icky ones mostly related to poor portrayal of women or terrible things happening to them. I know Stephen King writes women very questionably but some of these authors seem to have seen this as a challenge to be more problematic than someone writing this in the late 70s early 80s. But the cool thing with a short story collection like this is that you don’t have to stick with the stories that are like that and there were actually only two stories that I just skipped entirely. Overall this was a fantastic read.
Enshittification Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It By Cory Doctorow:
Don’t be put off by the somewhat off-putting title and emoji on the cover. This one’s actually a really good one though it’s one I would recommend balancing with something lighter. Why does the Internet, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and even things like your car and printer seem to have become so much worse? It’s all about maximizing profit extraction through a simple formula: pull you in by making it easy and fun (You can come to Facebook and automatically migrate your friends list over from Myspace and invite anyone not there yet), then make it worse for you once you’re there (the algorithm stops showing you what your friends are doing in order or what’s actually happening that’s interesting and starts favouring ads – lots of them. Then why not make it worse by then making it bad for the advertisers so they have to pay just to be seen. (Ever try to get a page or a post for a charity bike ride, for example, get noticed on Facebook? It’s not easy!) And that sort of thing is ending up in your home as well. Your fridge now can use facial recognition to see who is there and give them targeted ads or charge a monthly fee to access your email from the touchscreen. Or your nice new BMW will charge you monthly fees to get full engine power or heated seats. Or your John Deere tractor won’t let you fix it – anyone who fixes it must still have a tech from the company come and fix it and charge for it or it won’t run.
It’s a good one but balance it out with something fun for sure.
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino:
I should’ve known how I would feel overall about this by the fact that I learned about it from an article called Six Sad Books by Funny Women. It was 100% as advertised. It was also my favourite read of the month. Completely unputdownable.
The premise is a young girl living with a struggling single mom in Philadelphia , sustains a head injury and the night after has a dream where she is “activated” by aliens who want her to send them information about earth. She puts it into fax machine she rescued from the curb and “sends” it. Then sometimes the aliens respond. Her observations are funny, sad, interesting and often really spot on. It was so beautifully written, funny and heartbreaking all at the same time. Amazing read.
Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Road by Kate Harris:
I almost always have a travel book going at any given time. Ideally it’s about cycling, and better still by a woman. I find that often men, particularly when writing about athleticism like this talk more about their accomplishments, how amazing they are, or can be obnoxious like the somewhat famous cyclist who talked more than once about putting rocks into panniers of other cyclists. This book wasn’t any of that. It was a nice mix of a bit about the author’s life, a bit of history about the countries and places along the silk road and a bit about their challenges. It was really enjoyable but especially when it’s a long trip such as this I’m often left simultaneously a little jealous (I’d love to do an extremely long ride) but also a little befuddled by the financial logistics – especially for someone such as myself to do it. I only need to save up several months to a year or more of salary to keep our house and family going while I’m gone and add a bit more to that for some travel expenses. Yes, I do see that many, like this author, live very simply on the road with dinners of instant noodles and sleeping in tents or sketchy hostels. So in reality barring a surprise huge windfall that ship has sailed.
It is such a great coincidence that this article from JA Westenberg came out the same month I finished that story. Targeting peak experiences as “this is when I’ll be so happy!” or worse – the risky statement of “After this happens I’ll forever be happy” is a setup for failure. As they say – we have 2000 Mondays in our life – plus a whole lot more normal weekdays and weekends with errands. Isn’t it better to figure out how to make those times more awesome than placing all your bets on what might be, for example, a several-month circumnavigation of the border of India by bicycle – that may never happen and may be a letdown in the end. And I am 100% certain based on decades of experience, the post-experience letdown can be a monster leaving you feeling worse than when you left. Better to maximize wonderful daily experiences like the one I talk about here. Those are a breeze to find.
I saw this one at the bookstore but then, I feel a bit guilty about saying this, I took note of its title and found it in the library.
I picked it up in part because I thought it would be funny in a Lindy West sort of way – for those unfamiliar, her review of Love, Actually, is hilarious.
What I found was some of that, but also a huge ton of really interesting observations about many of his movies that either I hadn’t seen, or hadn’t seen for a long time and didn’t realize just how poorly the movies aged. Even one of my favourite movies – not just of Michael Douglas, but of all time, The Game, got roasted hugely and was far more problematic than I remember.
Throughout it was some really interesting observations about where we are, how we got here, and not just about relationships between men and women but capitalism, billionaires, and predatory and extractive business practices. I’d put this in the “Heavy” column but also such a good read.
And that’s it for January. I do have another light book on the go as well – I started this one around the same time as the Michael Douglas book:
Automatic Noodle by Analee Newitz:
While there are some things that are a little stressful about this book – it takes place in the country of California that separated from the US after what sounds like a horrible war. But now the worst of that is over. Intelligent robots, some of which used to fight in the war now are somewhat free and can live on their own. A group of them wakes in a restaurant whose owning company let it fail and abandoned it. I’m about half way through but the premise is that they are trying to open the restaurant back up as their own business selling homemade Biang-Biang hand-pulled chilli-oil noodles.
So far this one is really good but I find there’s something about “Cozy Fiction” that I can take only in small doses – everyone is so kind and perfect and stakes tend to be relatively low so I don’t find myself as compelled as I am to read more stressful books. Of course it’s very likely that I am reading more stressful books than my mind and our time in history should allow. I do have to keep an eye on that from time to time and have abandoned books because I found they were making me too sad throughout the day in the same way that waking in the morning from a sad dream can make one’s whole day feel a bit sad.
So what’re you all reading?
